Henry Starr and the Murder of Deputy Marshal Floyd Wilson

Another chapter in my recent book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/3AZiJY7, is about Henry Starr. A nephew-by-marriage of the noted Belle Starr, Henry once boasted that he had robbed more banks “than any man in America,” but he never bragged about killing Deputy Marshal Floyd Wilson early in his criminal career near Nowata, Oklahoma.

Born near Fort Gibson in 1873 in the Cherokee Nation, Henry moved with relatives to the Nowata area in 1888. His first run-ins with the law came about three years later, when he was accused first of horse stealing and then of introducing illegal spirits into Indian Territory. Starr later claimed he was totally innocent of both charges, but he decided, if he was going to be treated like a criminal, he might as well become one.

After a railroad agent was held up at Nowata in August 1892, Starr was charged with the crime, and the railroad later sent out a special agent, accompanied by Deputy Wilson, to try to apprehend the robber. In mid-December, Starr killed Wilson in a confrontation a few miles northeast of Nowata. Starr allegedly shot Wilson several times after the deputy was already down.

After Wilson's death, authorities redoubled their efforts to capture Starr, but that didn't keep him from pulling off a number of other crimes before he was finally arrested in Colorado and brought back to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to face numerous charges, including the murder of Wilson. Convicted of the latter charge, Starr was sentenced to death, but the verdict was overturned on appeal, and Starr eventually received only fifteen years in prison in a plea-bargain deal.

Starr's sentence was commuted by President Teddy Roosevelt after only a few years, and he supposedly tried to go straight for a while but soon relapsed into his old ways. After another spree of crimes, Starr was arrested in Arizona in 1909 and brought back to Colorado to face a bank robbery charge there. He was found guilty and sentenced to a long stint in the penitentiary, but he again got out early when he was released on parole in 1913.

Starr drifted back into Oklahoma and soon went on another criminal rampage. Again convicted of bank robbery, he was sentenced to 25 years in the Oklahoma State Prison. He was paroled after serving only four years, and he briefly went into the movie business but apparently decided he liked being a criminal better than playing one in films. Starr's notorious criminal career finally came to an end when he was mortally wounding during his gang's robbery of a bank in Harrison, Arkansas, in February 1921.

This is a greatly condensed version of the chapter on Starr in my new book.

Bob Rogers: A Desperate Outlaw and a Reckless Villain

Another chapter in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/48W8aRZ, is about Rob Rogers and his gang. Rogers is not as well-known nowadays as several other desperadoes who infested the Indian Nation in the latter part of the 19th century, such as Henry Starr, but Rogers was quite infamous in his own time.  

Born about 1873 in Arkansas, Bob, who was part Cherokee, moved to the Nowata area of Indian Territory with his father, Frank, and two younger brothers when he was still a boy. Some sources say Bob first became involved in criminal activity when he was scarcely 18, but details about these early incidents are scant.

Rogers’s first criminal exploit that can be well documented occurred on November 3, 1892, when he killed forty-year-old Jess Elliott, a lawyer from Vinita. On the fateful day, both men had been drinking when they got into an argument at a billiard parlor in Catoosa, and Rogers, going by the name Bob Talton, knocked the older man down and started beating him. Bystanders separated the combatants and put Rogers out of the parlor. Rogers waited outside, however, and when Elliott finally emerged, Rogers knocked him off his horse and slashed his throat with a knife. Elliott died before medical help could arrive.

Eight months later, the Bob Rogers gang, which now included his younger brothers, robbed the Frisco depot at Chelsea (Oklahoma) of $418 on the evening of June 30, 1889. 

About noon on July 13, Rogers and two partners in crime robbed the Mound Valley (Kansas) Bank, making off with about $800. 

On Friday evening, October 20, two men entered the depot of the D. M. & A. Railroad at Edna, Kansas, and forced the agent at the point of a revolver to open the safe. Recognized as Bob Rogers and Dick Brown of “the Wooten-Rogers gang of outlaws,” they made off with about $50. 

An outlaw gang tried to hold up a Missouri, Kansas and Texas train at the Kelso switch about six miles northeast of Vinita on December 22, 1893. The robbery attempt failed, but the escapade was later credited to the Rogers gang.

Bob Rogers and his crew struck again two nights later, Christmas Eve, when they held up an Iron Mountain Railroad train at Seminole in Indian Territory about five miles south of Coffeyville, Kansas. The gang cleaned out the mail and express cars and also went through the passenger cars "securing valuables of every description."

On the early morning of January 23, 1894, US deputy marshals surprised the Rogers gang at the home of Frank Rogers on Big Creek between Vinita and Nowata. Bob Rogers and another gang member were captured, while two members of the gang were either killed outright or mortally wounded. 

One newspaper opined that this episode would mark the end of Bob Rogers's criminal career, but Rogers wasn't ready to hang up his holster. Released on bond, he came back home and soon started organizing another gang. By very early March 1895, the new Rogers gang had already committed “several small depredations” in the area of Nowata, and just a day or two after this report circulated, the Rogers gang held up a store at Angola, Kansas. 

Rogers’s new notoriety didn’t last long. On Friday evening, March 15, a posse led by US. marshal James Mayes trapped Rogers at his father's home. Rogers killed one of the posse members before the lawmen retreated and called on Rogers to come out and surrender or else they would burn the house down. Rogers agreed to give up and was allowed to carry his gun out with him as long as kept it pointed down. When he got out onto the front porch and was ordered to drop the weapon and throw up his hand, he instead raised it and began backing toward the house. He got off just a single shot before he was riddled with bullets by the posse. 

Celebrating Rogers's demise, one newspaper said that his death would "rid the country of a desperate outlaw and reckless villain.”

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of the Bob Rogers gang's activities.

 

Ned Christie, Hero or Villain?

Another chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/40Azy65, chronicles the escapades of Ned Christie, a Cherokee Indian who waged a personal war against Federal authorities during the late 1800s. Much like Zeke Proctor, whom I wrote about last week, Christie was viewed in a completely different light by much of the Cherokee Nation from how he was characterized in the American press. To newspapermen, Christie was a notorious desperado who’d killed a deputy US marshal from ambush, but to many Cherokees, he was wrongly accused of murder by a repressive federal government and his resistance to arrest was nothing short of heroic.

A well-respected member of the Cherokee tribe, Christie first ran into trouble when he killed a man with whom he was hunting after the man supposedly called him an S.O.B. Charged with manslaughter and tried in a Cherokee court, Christie was acquitted in 1885 and went on to serve on the tribe's Executive Council.

Around the first of May 1887, US deputy marshal Daniel Maples was killed at Tahlequah while Christie was there for a tribal meeting, and he and three other men were eventually charged with the crime, partly because they were known to oppose federal authority in Indian Territory. The other three men were arrested, and one of them accused Christie of being the trigger man in the shooting of Maples. Christie said he was innocent and was willing to be tried in a Cherokee court, but he refused to surrender to federal authorities.

Thus began a years-long "war" between Christie and his allies on one side and deputy marshals on the other, as Christie, from his so-called fort east of Tahlequah, defied attempt after attempt to arrest him. After numerous futile attempts to kill or capture Christie, deputy marshals finally surrounded his home/fort in early November 1892 and killed him during a day-long siege and a furious exchange of gunfire.

Christie’s body was taken to Fort Smith for identification and then released to his father for burial in the family cemetery at Wauhillau, Oklahoma. Since his death, Christie has often been sensationally depicted in books and articles as a violent, bloodthirsty desperado. On the other hand, at least one story emerged in the early 1900s purporting to exonerate Christie completely of the Maples murder, the crime that catapulted him into outlawry, and many Cherokees today honor him as a hero for standing against US government encroachment on tribal properties and rights.

This is just a brief summary of the chapter about Christie in my new book. Check out the book for a much more extensive version of Christie's story.

Goingsnake Gunfight

Like the Boudinot and Ridge murders I wrote about last week, the Goingsnake gunfight that left eleven people dead near Christie, Oklahoma, in April of 1872, is something I've previously written about on this blog. However, since one of the chapters in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ, is devoted to the gunfight, I'm going to summarize the event again. 

Exactly what happened is a matter of dispute to this day, because the two sides involved in the gunfight, Cherokee tribal members and the US Marshals Service, told markedly different stories. What we know for sure is that Ezekial "Zeke" Proctor, a member of the Cherokee tribe, was scheduled for trial in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation on April 15 on a charge of having killed Polly Beck two months earlier.

Polly, who was married to a white man named Kesterson, was also a member of the Cherokee tribe, but a combination of family and tribal resentments had cast her and Proctor on opposite sides. Polly's family had sided with the Treaty Party (see last week's post) over thirty years earlier when the tribal members were removed from their homelands in the Southeast to present-day Oklahoma, whereas Proctor's family had sided with the Anti-Treaty Party. Also, Kesterson had previously been married to Proctor's sister, and Proctor reportedly blamed him for the breakup of the marriage.  

Most important, perhaps, was a jurisdictional dispute between Proctor and his allies on one side and Polly's family and friends on the other. After Proctor killed Polly and wounded Kesterson, Kesterson had journeyed to Fort Smith to enlist U.S. authorities in the matter, while Proctor and his allies felt strongly that the matter should be left to Cherokee tribal authority. The US Marshals Service now claimed jurisdiction in the assault on Kesterson, but the Cherokee Nation considered Kesterson an adopted citizen and resented any interference in the matter by the US government.

On the day of Proctor's trial for the murder of Polly Beck, a party of deputy marshals, along with some of Polly's kinsmen, showed up with the avowed intention of arresting Proctor on the assault charge, should he be acquitted on the murder charge. As I say, exactly what happened next is a matter of dispute, but a gunfight broke out almost immediately, and when the shooting ceased, nine men lay dead, two mortally wounded, and several others suffering wounds of varying severity. Most of the fatalities (seven or eight) were deputy marshals. 

Even what to call this incident has been a matter of disagreement over the years. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, reports from the deputy marshals called it a massacre, and the white press adopted that terminology. So, for many years, the incident was known in popular culture as the Goingsnake Massacre. More recently, the term Goingsnake Tragedy has been suggested as a more objective term. 

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of the Goingsnake Tragedy. https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ